Even though I’m a staunch libertarian, I’m not under any illusion that everyone is open to our ideas. Particularly since, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, we get falsely stereotyped as being heartless, hedonistic, anti-social, and naively isolationist.

That’s why I’m willing to accept incremental reforms. Compared to my libertarian dream world, for instance, the entitlement reforms in the Ryan budget are very modest. But they may be the most we can achieve in the short run, so I don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

But I do make the bad the enemy of the good. Politicians who expand the size and scope of government get on my wrong side, regardless of whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

Which explains why I haven’t approved of any Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.

With this in mind, you can imagine my shock when I read Robert Patterson’s recent column that blames recent GOP presidential woes on…you guessed it, “far-right libertarians.”

…in the political big leagues, …the GOP strikes out with the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections… That familiar lineup shares one big liability: libertarian economics, which has been undermining the Republican brand… That message represents the heart and soul of a party that started sleeping with far-right libertarians in 1990. …In the libertarian universe, “economic freedom” trumps everything: civilization, nation, statecraft, patriotism, industry, culture and family. This “economic freedom,” however, diverges greatly from the liberty that transformed the United States into an industrial, financial and military colossus.

What the [expletive deleted]!

Let’s go down the list of recent GOP presidential candidates and assess whether they were captured by “far-right libertarians” and their dangerous philosophy of “economic freedom.”

George H.W. Bush – He increased spending, raised tax rates, and imposed costly new regulations. If that’s libertarian, I’d hate to see how Patterson defines statism.

Do you see any libertarians? Me neither.

Robert Dole – All you need to know is that he described his three proudest accomplishments as the creation of the food stamp program, the imposition of the costly Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Social Security bailout. I don’t see anything on that list that’s remotely libertarian.

I also disagree with several of the policies that Patterson advocates, such as protectionism and industrial subsidies.

But that’s not the purpose of this post. Libertarians already face an uphill battle. The last thing we need is to be linked to a bunch of big-government Republicans when we share almost nothing in common on economic policy.

The congressional Democrats who crafted the legislation ignored virtually every actuarial principle governing rational insurance pricing. Premiums will soon reflect that disregard—indeed, premiums are already reflecting it. …Guaranteed issue incentivizes people to forgo buying a policy until they get sick and need coverage (and then drop the policy after they get well). While ObamaCare imposes a financial penalty—or is it a tax?—to discourage people from gaming the system, it is too low to be a real disincentive. The result will be insurance pools that are smaller and sicker, and therefore more expensive.

How bad will it be? Well…

Many actuaries, such as those in the international consulting firm Oliver Wyman, are now predicting an average increase of roughly 50% in premiums for some in the individual market for the same coverage. …Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Virginia will likely see the largest increases—somewhere between 65% and 100%. Another 18 states, including Texas and Michigan, could see their rates rise between 35% and 65%.

Which is why 2014 is the “Year of the Snake” in more places than just China.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that readers of International Liberty are not quite representative of the overall population (I need more looters and moochers in my audience, sort of like what you see in this cartoon).

Yes, I’m going to be bold and say that Obama will get more than 12.5 percent of the vote.

Indeed, I’m guessing he’ll get at least a plurality of the vote. And I’m specifically predicting he’ll get a majority of the electoral college.

I’ve been predicting that Obama would win re-election for the past six months, and I see no reason to change my mind now that it’s election day. I’m even moving two more states – New Hampshire and Virginia – into Obama’s column, which will be enough to give him a 294-244 margin in the electoral college.

As you can see from the large number of states in the “leaning” category, I don’t have a high level of confidence in my prediction. And plenty of my Republican friends have made strong arguments that the polls are flawed because of “turnout” assumptions.

But I have no competence to judge the veracity of these claims, so I’m going with my gut instinct and calling it for the Spender-in-Chief.

If my guess of an Obama victory turns out to be correct, I suppose I could claim special insight because of my January 1 prediction that Obama would win if the unemployment rate fell under 8 percent. But as you can see from this graph, I’ve always shown Obama ahead, even when the joblessness rate was higher.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s anything terribly unusual or unconventional about my predictions for the electoral college. But I am going to be a non-conformist in my guesses about the partisan breakdown of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.

Republicans began the year with high hopes of taking control of the Senate, but a series of mis-steps have hurt the GOP and some people even predict they will lose seats. That’s possible, but I’m going out on a limb and predicting a two-seat gain for Republicans.

I’m also going to be a non-conformist in my predictions for the lower chamber, guessing a one-seat pick-up for the GOP.

I’ll also make two final predictions. First, drawing from my post yesterday about key ballot initiatives, I predict that California voters will reject all the proposed tax increases. This will prove that left-wingers are capable of being right-wingers when their own money is on the table.

Second, I’ll offer a prediction that’s about as controversial as asserting that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. I predict that government will get even bigger over the next four years, which will mean more corruption and weaker economic performance.

P.S. My predictions for the U.S. Senate assume that the independent candidate will win in Maine and will ally himself with the Democrats.

I was going to wait until the morning of the election to make my final prediction for the 2012 elections, but I’m inexplicably getting a lot of emails asking whether I’ve changed my mind since I predicted last month that Obama would eke out a narrow 271-267 victory.

So I’m going to cave to peer pressure and make a next-to-final guess about the outcome.

But my GOP friends won’t be happy, because the only thing I’m changing is that I’m putting Nevada in Obama’s column.

You’ll also notice I’m hedging my bets by putting lots of states in the “leaning” category. Depending on how these states break, we could get everything from a 332-206 rout for Obama to a comfortable 301-237 victory for Romney.

I’m curious, by the way, to see who readers support. Please vote below, and feel free to add additional thoughts in the comments section. This is a highly scientific poll (at least by the standards of the global warming cranks who say that “climate change” causes AIDS and that skeptics are racist).

The candidates are in alphabetical order, by the way, so Gary Johnson’s position has no significance beyond the fact that “J” comes before “O” or “R.”

Next Tuesday, I’ll include my predictions for the House and Senate when I make my final guess about the presidential election. Not to brag too much, but I was right on the mark in my prediction for the U.S. House and off by just one seat in my prediction for the U.S. Senate.

From a rational perspective, the logical choice is not voting. After all, the odds of your vote making a difference are infinitesimally small.

But that’s if you view voting as an “investment” choice – i.e., you taking time and effort to do X in hopes of getting Y in return.

The other view is that voting is a “consumption” choice – i.e., something we do for enjoyment, like eating a hamburger or going to a movie. You recognize your vote almost surely won’t matter, but you do it because it gives you pleasure to vote for someone (or, in my case, it gives you pleasure to vote against someone).

Now let’s consider libertarians, conservatives, and other advocates of small government. Regardless of whether they’re investment voters or consumption voters, what should they do this election?

Mike Godwin of Reason, however, says you should vote for Barack Obama. Though he starts out by suggesting that most of us should vote for the Libertarian candidate.

…if you’re a Libertarian who’s not in a swing state – you live in California, maybe, or Texas – there’s no compelling reason for you to cast your vote for anyone other than Gary Johnson.

But then he argues that voters in battleground states should prefer Obama over Romney.

…you should give some thought to voting for Obama as the lesser of the two big-government, Harvard-educated evils. …Romney seems perfectly capable of adopting a liberal government program when it suits him. While Romney officially opposes Obamacare, it’s scarcely different from the health-care reform Romney presided over in Massachusetts.

I suspect most supporters of limited government won’t disagree with his assertion that Romney is squishy, but then Godwin goes off the reservation.

…there actually is a libertarian argument for Obamacare. …a truly universal system is the best option for maximizing health-care efficiencies. And if we can preserve some aspects of competition among insurers (which Obamacare, mimicking the health-care plan proposed by the GOP to counter Bill Clinton’s efforts at health-care reform, attempts to do), that’s all to the good. But there’s an even stronger libertarian argument for Obamacare. Namely, it frees more Americans to take better jobs without worrying about losing the health care plan they had in their old jobs. Worker mobility is one of the things that reliably fuels free enterprise, and workers will be more mobile under Obamacare than they would be under Romney’s semi-dismantled version of it.

I obviously disagree, but Godwin isn’t being crazy. Indeed, he’s basically echoing the pro-mandate position that was advanced by my former colleagues at the Heritage Foundation.

This is a reasonable position if you start from the premise that there’s no way of unwinding most of the existing government policies that have prevented markets from operating in the healthcare sector. That’s not my view, so I’m merely saying Godwin has a legitimate point, not that he’s right.

Getting back to his pro-Obama argument, he closes with discussion of social issues.

…let me underscore three points where Obama is surely closer to libertarians than Romney is. One of these is abortion rights, self-evidently. …Another is immigration. …A third quasi-libertarian position is Obama’s late-arriving but still-welcome stance on gay marriage.

I don’t find these arguments compelling. Libertarians are not monolithically pro-life or pro-choice. But to the extent there’s unanimity, they agree that Roe v. Wade was a nonsensical decision and that the issue should be decided by state legislatures. Which sort of makes them allies with Republicans, even if they don’t necessarily agree with how states should handle the issue.

To summarize, I don’t find Godwin’s arguments convincing. If he really wanted to convince conservatives, libertarians, and other supporters of small government that Obama was the right choice, he should have argued that Romney would be another big-government statist like Bush. That’s a very compelling argument, as you can see from this list of Romney transgressions.

He even could have made the argument that keeping Obama for an additional four years would be the best way of laying the groundwork for a Reagan-style victory in 2016 with a presumably small-government advocate like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, or Paul Ryan at the top of the ticket. That would have caught my attention since my first political decision was to favor Carter over Ford in 1976 in hopes of paving the way for Reagan in 1980.

By the way, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong to vote for Romney, Obama, or Johnson. My job is to focus on policy, not politics. But it is the silly season of politics, so I can’t resist making some observations.

Not that I was terribly surprised, though I confess that I don’t remember if Gary Johnson was part of the quiz. And, if so, whether there were any differences between him and Ron Paul.

Speaking of Gary Johnson, I just took a quiz at the ISideWith website and it tells me that Gary Johnson shares 97 percent of my views.

That’s not a big shock, but I was surprised that the poll says I’m more Republican than Libertarian.

Methinks the people who put together the poll must be high on crystal meth. Yes, I’m probably a bit more conservative than the average libertarian on issues like terrorism and immigration, but I’m a far, far stronger advocate of limited government than the average GOPer.

But I gather the poll probably matches your views with the rhetoric of various candidates and parties, not their actual records.

But I have to confess that this new global poll is the most persuasive pro-Romney information that I’ve seen. Simply stated, if the nation that elected an idiot like Hollande overwhelmingly supports Obama, then maybe the alternative is acceptable.

On the other hand, I’m mystified why the Aussies are so in the tank for Obama. I thought they were rather sensible, based on their good economic reforms.